


oh where do we begin? (the rubble or our sins)

by the_crownless_queen



Series: Sapphic September 2018 [13]
Category: The 100 (TV), The Librarians (TV 2014)
Genre: Clarke is a Librarian, F/F, Lexa is the cursed sorta queen she wakes up from slumber, Sapphic September, Sapphic September 2018, the librarians au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-30
Updated: 2018-09-30
Packaged: 2019-07-20 22:34:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16146962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_crownless_queen/pseuds/the_crownless_queen
Summary: When Bellamy had told Clarke the Library needed her to investigate an centuries-old abandoned temple, she had thought she'd maybe find a couple of books and weapons, and that if she was lucky, none of them would be cursed too badly.She hadn't expected an actual, living person.





	oh where do we begin? (the rubble or our sins)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MedusaOfTheSpecies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MedusaOfTheSpecies/gifts).



> Written for Sapphic September, Day 13: Immortal!AU.  
> Thanks to Em for helping me out with this -- well, mostly suggesting the pairing once I finally figured out a plot.  
> You shouldn't really need to know anything about The Librarians for this, but just in case:  
> The Library is a magical library that exists in a sort of pocket/parallel space and stores magical knowledge and artifacts away from the normal world. It chooses Librarians, and the Librarians usually have Guardians to keep them safe. Or help keep them safe.

If somebody had asked Clarke ten years ago where she saw herself in the future, she wouldn’t have answered ‘kneeling and crawling through muddy tunnels in search for artifacts she hoped weren’t cursed’.

In fact, if someone had told her that this was what she’d be doing, she’d have sent them straight to some mental hospital, or at the very least a good psychologist.

Fifteen-year-old Clarke had, after all, been set on following in her mother’s footsteps and become a doctor. Well, that, or an astronaut, because fifteen-year-old Clarke had lofty dreams.

Twenty-five-year-old Clarke, however, had long since realized that shutting herself into a hospital wasn’t for her, and after switching majors to archeology, she had found herself being employed by the Library, an agency of dubious legality in charge of recovering magical artifacts from all over the globe.

Which had led her to this place — a temple lost in the middle of the Appalachian mountains that Bellamy, who was in charge of the place, had told her held ‘a relic of the highest value, lost to the centuries’.

Bellamy had also said ‘she’d know it when she saw it’ when Clarke had asked for more details, though, so she was more or less flying blind. Not that this was anything unusual — Clarke rarely had the luck to know what she was dealing with before she got there.

She avoided another trap — a pitfall, this time, because whoever had built this place wasn’t very imaginative but was sadly _very persistent_ — and ventured deeper into the darkness.

She wasn’t quite sure how deep into the temple she was, nor how long she’d been there. Her watch had stopped working the instant she’d set foot inside the thing, and her phone had died when she’d narrowly avoided a falling boulder some time ago.

Clarke thought she was getting close, though. The traps were becoming more frequent and dangerous — less attempting to dissuade an intruder and more outright trying to kill them — which she took to mean her goal had to be near.

Even so, she was still surprised to practically stumble into the funeral chamber — because that was what it was. There was no mistaking it.

It was a large circular room, larger than Clarke would have expected, even. It had high ceilings too, and those ceilings were richly decorated with scenes of battles and banquets. There were gorgeous in their details, and the colors were somehow still so vibrant they almost looked freshly painted.

But apart from those frescoes, the room was almost empty. Actually, the only object there was a large stone coffin, planted in the middle of the room. It was black, and appeared to be made of some type of marble — though not one that Clarke had ever seen before.

Her eyes were drawn to it instantly, and she found herself bespelled to walk towards it.

It was undoubtedly the artifact that Bellamy and the Library had sent her to recover.

She didn’t try to fight the pull. Clarke wasn’t really sure why — any other time, any other place, and she would have. A black tomb, hidden in a secret, creepy abandoned temple? Of course, she would have fought the pull to the clearly magical artifact.

It wasn’t that she couldn’t fight. Clarke could resist the pull, she _could_ fight it — if she wanted to.

And she didn’t want to.

The tomb, despite its appearance, didn’t feel dangerous. Clarke had had plenty of run-ins with the darker side of magic, and this didn’t feel like any of them. It felt… safe, almost.

The stone was warm when Clarke touched it. Not burning hot, but sunlight warm, like the stone had been out in the sun, despite it being locked in a room underground.

It shocked her a little and Clarke jerked back.

The room felt dimmer suddenly. Colder, too. The frescoes that had been so vibrant moments before looked mull duller now, and when Clarke’s eyes fell onto the coffin again, she took a step back.

The coffin was gone.

Well, not gone — the body of the coffin was still there. Its lid, though, had vanished.

Clarke staggered forward as she saw what was inside the coffin — or rather, _who_.

It was a woman, dressed in a dark leather outfit. It almost looked like a dress, though it was unlike any dress Clarke had ever seen. She had long dark hair, pulled back in thick tresses, and her eyes were covered with black paint, almost like a mask.

As Clarke watched, her heart racing in her chest, those eyes fluttered open. They immediately narrowed with suspicion, and the woman’s body tensed as she sat up.

Clarke couldn’t help admire her for that — her unease was barely noticeable. If Clarke had been the one in her place, she probably would have been panicking by now. A lot.

“Who are you?” the woman asked — though ‘asked’ wasn’t quite the right word. This felt closer to an order than a question.

There was an odd double tone to her words, giving her English a thick accent, and it suddenly occurred to Clarke that if this woman had been in this coffin since the temple had been built — and she had no reason to doubt that — she probably wouldn’t know the English Clarke spoke.

“I’m Clarke — I'm the Librarian.” She barely hesitated in adding her title — she still wasn’t quite sure what magic was placed on the word, but it had always helped her in clearing up the situation.

At her words, the woman’s dark eyes cleared of suspicion. It surprised her, just a little, and Clarke realized that she had been expecting it to fail for some reason.

“You can call me Lexa.”

“Erm, pleased to meet you?” Clark didn’t mean to put it as a question, but it came out that way anyway. “Under the circumstances, I mean.”

Lexa simply hummed as she climbed out of the coffin. She somehow managed to make that elegant, and Clarke’s mouth ran dry.

“Quite,” Lexa said once she was standing on the ground. Her legs shook a little but she held firm, and after a beat, she turned her head toward Clarke. Her eyes seemed to pierce Clarke down to her soul.

“You have my gratitude for waking me up,” Lexa said. Her eyes narrowed a little again as she took a few tentative steps. “How did you know to find me?”

Clarke winced. “I didn’t. Not really, anyway. I was sent here to collect an artifact by the Library — I didn’t think I’d be finding a person instead.”

Lexa nodded. “I see. And what were you intending to do with that artifact?”

It sounded like a trick question, and Clarke swallowed hard as she replied. “I was to bring it back to the Library. For storage purposes only, of course.”

“Of course,” Lexa echoed. Her eyes drifted to the walls, running along the frescoes. A small, bittersweet smile rose on her lips. “You said ‘was’?” she inquired as she turned back to Clarke. “Are those no longer your plans?”

Again, Clarke swallowed — Lexa’s gaze was so strong it made it hard to focus. “I don’t know,” she answered truthfully. “I suspect that —” She cut herself off, biting her lips.

“That?”

“That _you_ might be the artifact,” Clarke finished, her voice barely louder than a whisper. “I’ve never heard of a living artifact before.”

Something like surprised flashed in Lexa’s eyes. “Clever of you to figure that out,” she said. “But no, _I_ am not the artifact.”

Before hope could rise in Clarke’s chest, though, Lexa continued, “It is, however, part of me.”

Lexa tilted her head to the side and lifted her hair, revealing a small, dark shape at the back of her neck. It looked to be embedded in her skin, and Clarke had to suppress a shiver and the urge to reach for it.

“Oh,” was all she could say, in the end.

Lexa let her hair fall back down, covering that weird mark again. “Yes. This was why I was imprisoned here. My people thought my carrying the artifact wouldn’t be enough to protect them from it, and so they fashioned this… this prison for me. But you broke the enchantment, and freed me.”

Lexa bowed her head. “For that, you once again have my thanks.”

Clarke could feel her cheeks heat up. “It was nothing — anyone would have done the same.”

Lexa’s lips twisted into a slightly bitter smirk as she shook her head. “I assure you, ‘anyone’ would not have. And saving my life was not ‘nothing’ — without your intervention here, I do not know how much longer I would have remained in that state.”

Clarke struggled to think about it — already, the idea that Lexa had been trapped in that black coffin for who knew how long was something her mind shied away from. That she might have stayed there _forever_ if Clarke hadn’t been sent there was almost too horrible to consider.

“So, what happens now?”

Lexa’s voice drags her out of her thoughts, and Clarke startled badly enough that she almost tripped backward.

Clarke took a deep breath. “Well, that depends on you, really. I will be going back to the Library. I think you should come with me — maybe we can figure out a way to safely store that artifact without you needing to carry it.”

“And then?” Lexa’s eyes bore into Clarke’s, causing her to shiver.

“And then you’ll have a whole new world to discover,” she replied, smiling a little.

Lexa paused for a moment, standing so still that Clarke could have mistaken her for a statue if she hadn’t been able to see her chest rise and fall. It occurred to her then that Lexa, despite having been imprisoned here, looked about as old as Clarke herself.

“I would be able to leave that… Library of yours?”

Clarke only hesitated for a moment. “Yes. Of course.” It wasn’t a promise she could really make, not when she didn’t know what the artifact Lexa carried was or what it did, but it wasn’t a lie.

Clarke would make sure of it.

Lexa stared at her for a long time before she finally nodded. She made the gesture look regal, and Clarke’s heart gave an odd _pang._

“Alright, then,” Lexa said with a tight smile. “I will go with you to this _Library._ "

Before Clarke really had the time to react, Lexa was stepping aside, gesturing toward the entrance. “Lead the way, Clarke.”

And Clarke did.

**Author's Note:**

> More on this verse that didn't make it into the story:  
> \- Bellamy used to be a Librarian but he was caught into a curse at some point and because of reasons, he's cured but now he can't leave the Library without dying anymore. They are however trying to change that but it's slow going. Very slow going. His Guardian was Octavia but now that he's stuck she totally took over his Librarian duties, which he hates.  
> \- Raven is very much into experimenting with the artifacts inside the Library and she's the one who creates the portal thing from the show that allows Librarians to teleport basically to any door in the world as long as they know where it is  
> \- Lexa eventually sort of becomes the Guardian to Clarke's Librarian, mostly because she refuses to let Clarke leave her sight, because she was trained to be a warrior queen not a barrista (that experience ended badly for the clients), and actually is surprisingly knowledgeable about magic in general  
> \- Yes I made the Commender spirit/chip thing into a magical artifact. Yes it has magical powers. (Yes people are very interested in it.)  
> \- Jasper is a Librarian in training and when Clarke brings Lexa back, he's against it because 'this is literally the start of horror movies, Clarke, I've seen those movies'


End file.
